No shortages...
I was just too amazed to laugh when I saw that a senior Government minister had declared that there was no shortage of petrol, only a distribution problem.
This line is just like putting off the inevitable by closing your eyes. There is plenty of petrol at the refineries, but people buy it at petrol stations; there is a clue in the name minister.
It just shows the lengths that this Government will go to deny responsibility for what is going wrong. Not just with HGV driver shortages, but with farms, fishing, border controls, food exports, gas prices, test tube shortages, a construction industry struggling to get supplies, and all the rest.
The problem common to all of them is Brexit, and not just any old Brexit; the Brexit this incompetent Government negotiated. They were told time and time again by business what they needed and what would happen and what did they do? They stopped talking to the ones who told them the truth.
Because their cause was pure.
Not a hint of reality, mastery of detail, any concession that there was a better way of doing it; nothing but arrogance, ignorance and blind idealogical commitment to a cause that no one voted for.
How did promises of more money for the NHS, cheaper food and a better deal with the EU than the existing one, lead to this?
If the UK had become like Norway, as promised, there would be red tape at the borders, a little less influence in the world, some money paid to the EU every year but untrammelled access to the Single Market and no shortages.
When the Treasury calculated the damage of Brexit at 6-9% of GDP, I doubt they based the calculations on this level of incompetence. The UK hasn’t even introduced border checks yet.
This isn’t going to end well.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.